From the 150th anniversary of Old Faithful Geyser’s world-recognized moniker to the 75th anniversary of the closure of the Heart Mountain Confinement Site, the Cody area and Yellowstone National Park will mark numerous anniversaries of places and historic events in 2020 that have shaped this region’s legacy and destiny.

“We will celebrate many historic milestones next year, and they all remind us of the profound impact the Cody Yellowstone region has had on the continuing story of the American West,” said Claudia Wade, director of the Park County Travel Council. “Sometimes those milestones remind us to strive for better, such as the sobering anniversary of the end of the Heart Mountain Confinement Site. And sometimes they are just plain fun, especially if you are a history buff like me.”

Notable anniversaries in Cody, Powell and Meeteetse include:

• 75th anniversary of the closing of the Heart Mountain WWII Confinement Site. Some 14,000 Japanese-Americans — most from California — were confined at the Heart Mountain WWII Confinement Site, which was hastily assembled on barren, windswept land outside of Ralston. When the war ended, the state of Wyoming made fast work to send the final incarcerees from the camp.

• 110th anniversary of the Buffalo Bill Dam and Visitor Center. When it was completed in 1910, the 325-foot-high Buffalo Bill Dam was the highest concrete dam in the world, and it was the first concrete arch dam built in the United States. The dam now irrigates more than 93,000 acres of farmland in the region.

• 120th anniversary of the establishment of the Chamberlin Inn. Agnes Chamberlin, an employee of Buffalo Bill’s Cody Enterprise, purchased a sagebrush-covered vacant lot across the street from the newspaper’s office and built and opened a boarding house. The hotel thrived, along with an in-house dentist office established by her husband Mark, who operated the medical office without the benefit of a license.  Ev and Susan Diehl purchased and renovated the property into a boutique inn 2005; the Chamberlin is in the process of being acquired by Hawaii-based Paniolo Properties, LLC, which is owned by family members Rebecca, Michael, Mariah, and Devon Dailey.

• 125th anniversary of the original townsite of Cody. When he envisioned the town that would bear his name, Buffalo Bill first chose and laid out a town on a plot of land west of downtown Cody in 1895. Today that site is the home of Old Trail Town/Museum of the West. Cody had passed through the region in the 1870s and thought the combination of scenery, wildlife for hunting, rich soil and irrigation for farming, and proximity to Yellowstone would make the spot perfect for the tourism-based frontier town he envisioned.

• 135th anniversary of the discovery of gold in Kirwin. High in the Absaroka Mountains above the town of Meeteetse is the town of Kirwin, where the discovery of gold in 1885 led to the creation of a small boomtown. After a savage snowstorm struck the isolated town in 1907, most townspeople relocated, creating a ghost town in their wake.

Notable anniversaries in Yellowstone National Park:

• 150th anniversary of naming Old Faithful Geyser. The geyser was discovered by members of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition on Sept. 18, 1870. One explorer noted that it spouted at regular intervals and that the eruptions of the boiling water reached as much as 125 feet high. Yellowstone is home to more than 500 geysers representing more of than half of the geysers in the world.

• 105th anniversary of the year private automobiles were admitted to the park. Private automobiles began replacing the touring cars, stagecoaches and other public transportation in 1915, and the park was never the same after that. With the freedom of exploring at their own pace, increasing numbers of independent-minded travelers entered the park. Annual park visitors more than doubled between 1914 and 1915, jumping from 20,250 visitors in 1914 to 51,895 in 1915.

• 50th anniversary of a new bear-management plan. Prior to 1970, visitors to Yellowstone would gather nightly and take their seats in National Park Service-supplied bleachers to watch wild black bears rummage through the park’s garbage dumps. Predictably, bear-caused human injuries averaged 45 annually. After the Park Service removed the open-pit dumps and bleachers, bears were forced to return to a natural diet of plant and animal foods, and the number of bear-human conflicts dropped to an average of 10 per year.

• 25th anniversary of the beginning of wolf restoration to Yellowstone National Park. After being exterminated in the park, gray wolves from western Canada were relocated to the park starting in 1995. The park’s wolf population today is around 80 wolves in nine packs.